


The Man Out of Time

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:31:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I hate to be where he is not, when he is not. And yet, he is always going, and I cannot follow." </p>
<p>John and Sherlock live their lives like any normal couple. Well, apart from the crime solving. Oh, and the fact that Sherlock suffers from a rare medical condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into the past or future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am not Audrey Niffenegger. Nor am I Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, or Steve Thomson.  
> Some parts will be heavily copied from 'The Time Traveler's Wife.

_**John**_  
  
It's hard being left behind, I won't pretend otherwise. I wait for Sherlock, not knowing where he is, when he is, wondering if he's okay.   
I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.   
  
I go to sleep alone, I wake up alone. I work overtime at the surgery until I'm tired enough to sleep. I watch the wind play with the empty coffee cups and crisp packets abandoned outside Speedy's. Everything seems so simple until you think about it. Love truly is intensified by absence.  
  
I try to live my life as I normally would, but when your life revolves around another person as much as mine has around Sherlock, it's difficult. But still, I wait for him. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. Each moment is like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting.  
  
Why has he gone where I cannot follow?   
  


* * *

**_Sherlock_**  
  
How does it feel? _How does it feel?_  
  
Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered, just for an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that petri dish you were holding, the slightly too tight purple shirt, the favorite black jeans and the navy socks with the hole in the left big toe, the living room, the experiment that's just about ready in the kitchen: all of these have vanished.   
You are standing, completely naked, up to your ankles in grime along an unidentified suburban alleyway in the middle of the night.   
You wait a minute to see if maybe you will just snap right back to your experiment, your apartment, et cetera. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear, you start walking. You eventually come across an all-too-quaint house in the middle of nowhere, where you have the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing will sometimes land you in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time-consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.

Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up too quickly even if you are sitting on the couch half asleep. You hear blood rushing in your head, You feel like you're falling. Your hands and feet are tingling and then they aren't there at all. It only takes an instant, you have just enough time to try to hold on, to flail around, and then you are getting carpet burn from sliding along the floor a dark red hotel room in 1991, and hit your head on someone's bathroom door, causing this person, a Ms. Audrey Cheshire from Oxford, to open their door - while wrapped in a towel - and start screaming because there's a naked, carpet-burned man passed out at her feet.   
You wake up in some unknown Hospital, concussed, with a policeman sitting at your bedside reading the sports section. Thankfully, you lapse back into unconsciousness and wake up again hours later in your own bed with your husband leaning over you looking very worried.

Is there a logic, a rule to all this coming and going, all this dislocation? Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell? There are clues; as with any disease there are patterns, possibilities. Exhaustion, loud noises, stress, standing up suddenly, flashing light-any of these can trigger an episode. But: I can be reading case files, tea in hand and John dozing beside me on our bed and suddenly I'm in 1979 watching my younger self prod a dead frog with a stick in my parent's driveway.   
I fear finding myself in a prison cell, an elevator full of people, the middle of a road. I appear from nowhere, naked. How can I explain? I have never been able to carry anything with me. No clothes, no money, no ID. Fortunately I don't wear glasses.

When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.

It's ironic, really. I don't care for much extravagance. I live for my work. The thrill of chasing a suspect down a street in the early pre-dawn light, reading through case files from years gone by, good humoured silences after an argument over something petty like the milk, the symmetry of making tea for John and I (Black, two sugars. Strong with a dot of milk and no sugar.) Always the same.   
These are the things that can pierce me with longing when I am displaced by Time's whim.

And John, always John. John in the morning, sleepy; tea in hand and one sock on. John typing something up on his blog, taking time over every word. John reading, posture slumped, absent-mindedly rubbing his heels. John's low voice in my ear as he crawls into bed.

I hate to be where he is not, when he is not. And yet, I am always going, and he cannot follow.


	2. They Meet.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am speechless. Here is Sherlock, calm, clothed, and younger than I have ever seen him. Sherlock is here in St Bart's, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I can hardly believe it."

__**John**  
  
St Barts is cold and smells like disinfectant. Although all I can see is carpeted floors. My cane makes a dull sound against it.  
I'm here to pick up some stuff from Mike, medical journals and such, that he had stored for me while I was in Afghanistan. God, it's strange being back.  
  
I walk into the creaky, dimly-lit elevator and for a moment I am hit with a strong sense of deja-va and I feel like nothing has changed. It is only when it stops on the second floor and I take a too-confident step forwards and wince do I realize how much really has.  
  
I walk along the all too familiar corridor and hear an all too familiar voice.  
  
"John! John Watson!"  
  
I turn back to where the voice was coming from and give him a tight smile "Hi, Mike. I didn't see you there."  
  
"Barley recognised me, more like. I know, I got fat!" He gestures to himself and grins.  
  
"No! No... Of course not..." I try to sound convincing in this.  
  
"You flatterer. Come on, I left them in the lab" He says, and I follow behind him.  
  
We walk into the lab and after the dullness of the corridor, the brightness blinds me for a moment. When my eyes readjust, I notice a dark silhouette at the back of the room. It's familiar, but I can't tell how.  
  
"I just left them at the back of the room there, mate!" Mike's booming voice interrupts my train of thought, and I snap out of it with a start.  
  
"Yeah, great... Thanks." I mumble, and I make my way towards the back where I find myself face to face with Sherlock.  
  
I am speechless. Here is Sherlock, calm, clothed, and younger than I have ever seen him. Sherlock is here in St Barts, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I can hardly believe it. He looks at me, uncertain, but somewhat interested.  
  
"Is there something I can help you with?" he asks.  
  
" _Sherlock!_ " I can barely refrain from jumping on him when it is obvious he has never seen me before in his life.  
  
"I'm sorry, I... Have we met?" He glances past me to look warily at Mike, then back to me, and then something clicks and he realizes that he - some future Sherlock - has met this radiant bufoon standing before him. The last time I saw him he was shakily unbuttoning his cufflinks in the meadow.  
  
I try to reassure him "I'm John Watson, I knew you... when I was younger..."  
  
I trail off. I'm aghast and at a complete loss because I'm standing here in front of this beautiful man, absolutely in love with him, and he has not the faintest clue who I am.  
Unbidden, images of Sherlock throughout the years come to mind. Sherlock wearing a huge oversized football shirt belonging to my Father, Sherlock deducing my classmates from their handwriting, Sherlock drinking tea from a flask and eating a (very badly prepared) tuna sandwich smuggled from my house, Sherlock with his forehead pressed to mine on my eighteenth birthday. Here! Now!  
  
"Can you... Will you meet me later for dinner, or something...?" To my immense relief, he agrees.  
We arrange to meet later at a nearby Italian called Angelo's, and I back out of the lab grinning, Mike and the books forgotten.  
  
I practically float downstairs, into the foyer and out into the crisp Autumn air. Halfway across the street, I realize I've been practically skipping and in the midst of my joy, have left my cane upstairs.  
  


* * *

_**Sherlock**_  
  
It's a standard, habitual day in August, sunny and crisp.   
  
I'm working on a case in a small, cramped lab that smells like ham sandwiches and has the air conditioning on full, despite it being completely unnecessary.  
The case itself is interesting, but waiting for results is boring and I'm feeling rather sorry for myself.  
  
In fact, I'm feeling old. The way only a twenty-four-year-old can after spending half of the previous day higher than a kite and the other half suffering from the rather spectacular come down that cocaine tends to give. I need coffee.  
  
I'm packing up my notes and laptop when Mike Stamford walks in like a stand up comedian, commanding the attention of everyone in the room, despite the fact I'm the only one here.   
Except I'm not, there's someone with him. I pay no attention, and continue packing up my things, when the man walks towards me and almost literally bumps into me. 

And suddenly I'm looking down on (literally, not figuratively) this man with the kindest face I have ever seen. His dark grey eyes sparkle look up at me as though I'm his own personal Jesus. My stomach does a kind of flip that I'm not really accustomed to.   
God only knows what I have said or done to this somewhat adorable man who obviously knows me. At the risk of standing there for the rest of the night, I say  
  
"Is there something I can help you with?"  
  
The man sort of breathes " _Sherlock!_ " which makes me feel even worse because I have not a single clue who this man is, (Well, of course, I know that he's an Army doctor who's recently been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know he has a brother who’s worried about him but he won’t go to him for help because he doesn’t approve of him – possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that his therapist thinks his limp’s psychosomatic – and she's right.) not even his name.   
  
"I'm sorry, I... Have we met?" I glance behind him towards Mike, who looks slightly puzzled, but more like 'you arsehole'.   
  
"I'm John Watson, I knew you... when I was younger..." I look back to John, who has taken a step forwards, as though examining my face in great detail.  
Suddenly, something clicks. Stupid! Of course I don't know him. Well, yet. Some massive lottery-winning chunk of my future has found me here and now, in the present. How bizarre.   
  
The glowing man in front of me invites me to dinner and I accept, stunned. We are to meet tonight at Angelo's and John, having secured me for later, breezes out of the lab, leaving behind the cane he walked in with (I knew it was psychosomatic) and whatever books it was he came here for in the first place.  
  
Agog, I look towards Mike who shrugs at me as though to say 'I have no idea what the hell just happened' and then walks out.   
  
I look out of the window only to see John prancing across the street and - is he? God, he is - swinging on a lamp post, limp totally forgotten. I start to chuckle as I realize that this is probably going to change my life as I know it. I laugh louder, and John Watson scatters autumn leaves in his enthusiasm.  
  
  


* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
